Yacht slips, iPod touches, and hops were on Golden LEAF’s menu of grants this year — and leaders of the nonprofit foundation are defending every penny.
The projects are part of $71 million in grants distributed in the previous fiscal year. Others include funds for renovating a vacant structure in Winston-Salem to house a “green business incubator” and an initiative to encourage consumers to spend at least 10 percent of their grocery budgets on locally grown foods.
The General Assembly established Golden LEAF (Long-term Economic Advancement Foundation) after a multi-state settlement with tobacco companies in 1998. The foundation’s goal is to spur economic development in tobacco-dependent areas of North Carolina.
The overall settlement was valued at more than $200 billion, to be distributed over a 25-year period. Half of the state’s estimated $4.6-billion share goes to Golden LEAF. The remaining half is split between the Health & Wellness Trust Fund and the Tobacco Trust Fund Commission, whose 2010 grants were reported on recently by Carolina Journal.
As part of 150 grants in the last cycle, the foundation gave $200,000 to the Rowan-Salisbury School System to purchase iPod touches for a high school. Students will use the iPods in conjunction with laptop computers.
“The nature of it is trying to look at the best way to use these devices, which are second nature to young people that age. That’s just how they learn,” said the foundation’s president, Dan Gerlach. “What they’re used to working with is a little different than what we’re used to working with.”
The foundation chose Rowan County because it’s adjacent to Cabarrus County, where the cigarette manufacturer Phillip Morris once had a plant, Gerlach said.
Golden LEAF also underwrote $50,000 to build nine yacht slips and reconfigure a kayak launch on the Roanoke River. The funds leverage more than a quarter-million dollars from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
“They’ve had people interested in yachts up and down the seaboard, and they would like a place to dock, and that would be a good place for them to locate,” Gerlach said.
Another $30,000 grant went to assist Edgecombe County in creating a tourism development office, partly in hopes of getting a local occupancy tax. Golden LEAF’s share will be used “to hire a consultant and acquire database software” to begin the project, according to the grant description.
Gerlach said the region’s tourism component is focused on historic homes and cultural heritage. “They do have a lot of history in African-American music out there,” he said.
The foundation also awarded:
• $250,000 to support an agriculture-biotechnology initiative at the N.C. Biotech Center, a nonprofit organization created in 1984 to use public funds to finance biotech projects in the state.
• $5 million to help the Center for Community Self-Help make business loans, with priority given to minority- or women-owned small businesses.
• $28,500 for N.C. State University to study hops, a key ingredient in beer.
• $422,500 to “create curb appeal and set the stage for new jobs and investment” by renovating Martin Luther King Blvd. Corridor in Kinston.
• $100,000 to support operations of the N.C. Sustainable Local Foods Advisory Council, which is devoted to encouraging economic development by building a “local food economy” and “preserving open space.”
• $35,000 to spur tourism by funding “Second Saturdays,” a series of cultural events across the state put on by the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources.
• $200,000 for new sidewalks on Heritage St. in Kinston.
Golden LEAF made 122 grants in the 2009 fiscal year totaling $33 million.
David N. Bass is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.